9 February 2014

Strike Fighters - Android Game Review

Strike Fighters: Top Gun in the palm of your hands!

Over the last three decades flight simulator games have improved in
leaps and bounds. There are so many variants now that even Wikipedia
lists separate categories for combat flight sims, general flight sims
and space simulators. So now that we’ve got such powerful phones in our
pockets it’s no surprise that we would eventually have fully decked out
combat sims. Read on to hear about the ace product made by the
developers at Third Wire Productions.

Gameplay

You pick a fighter plane, jump straight
into the war zone and then try to obliterate everything on the radar.
It sounds pretty straightforward because it is… it’s so geared up
towards this instant action that there isn’t even much of an
explanation. The menu screen is just your plane selection and then
you’re thrown straight into the deep end.

The control of the plane is through your accelerometer: so tilt left
and right to roll the plane and tilt up and down to pull the nose of the
plane up and down. Although this accelerometer-joystick is hard to
grasp initially, the controls are fairly easy to understand (… as long
as you’ve played a flight sim before!). If you touch the on screen
button on the right hand side then you’ll start firing bullets directly
in front of you. There’s also a throttle controller on the left hand
side.

At this point, the seasoned fighter pilots out there are probably
thinking… what about the Head Up Display (HUD)?… Without this HUD then
shooting the enemy is like some mysterious sixth sense ability… it’s
next to impossible. But fear not… this is only a game, so this isn’t
uber realistic. A guidance cross hair will project where the plane will
be and if you fire near this little red circle then you’ll blast the
enemy to smithereens.

Campaign

The game starts out in the Cold War in
1954. Then the game will advance one year for every 5 kills. Every
time you advance a year, you earn 1 unlock key which you can use to
unlock newer aircraft. If you get promoted then you’ll be rewarded with
more keys. The level promotion is based off the total accumulated
score and not limited to years – so kill more enemies within the rounds
to unlock more planes. Your starting planes will only have machine
guns, but if you invest the time in the game then you’ll eventually be
able to get auto lock-on missiles!

Room for improvement

Personally I find the
accelerometer-joystick control method quite flawed. The point of the
joystick is that you’re meant to be able to pull off aerial techniques
(like barrel rolls) easier. They’re already quite hard to execute
because of the spinning element involved but to then compound the
difficulty with a weird phone/view orientation makes almost impossible
to pull off. Of course these fancy flying methods aren’t absolutely
necessary, but the purist would argue they’re critical in dogfights.
The result is that you’ll find you start your movement in a very
distinct way so you only roll or only pitch up/down. It would be nice
to have the option of onscreen controls.

Rating: 4/5 Another Unity engine success where the
gameplay is as stunningly good as the graphics. The core game is top
notch and easy to understand instant action. Hopefully Third Wire
Productions will continue to release updates which improve the controls
and expand the gameplay.

Strike Fighters Tips and Tricks

Some unexplained features:

The tile sensor will automatically center every time you play. But
the button at the top center of the screen is also for manual
re-centering during mid-game flight.

The fastest manoeuvre is to pull up or dive. So the fastest way to
turn is to first rotate the plane ninety degrees so that you’ll dive up
or down in the horizontal plane. (This might be obvious to some people,
but not everyone.)

You don’t always have to shoot directly over the projected red
circle flight path. If the enemy is close then you just have to shoot
around the enemy. This is particularly the case if you and the enemy
are flying at each other.

The planes do have different handling characteristics – if you want
to understand them then focus on the rate of pulling up or diving or the
rolling. Once you find the plane you’re comfortable with then try
specialising in it. Don’t just use your unlock keys unnecessarily.